Combat
Chapter IV - Combat Armour and Shield Proficiencies Armour proficiency is the capacity for any character to wear a armour comfortably. If your character does not have this proficiency, using this armour doubles the encumbrance for your character. Shield proficiency is the capacity for any character to use a shield correctly. If your character does not have this proficiency, using that type of shield reduces it’s defense bonus by 1. Combat Basics Combat is performed with counter checks. The attacker tries to the hit the defender, and the defender tries to defend against the attack. If you can’t defend, then your last hope is your armour. If the armour doesn’t negate the damage, you lose hit points. Cover, Concealment, and being Prone Firing from cover is the best way to protect yourself. While under cover, you gain a bonus to defend. Full cover is +5, ¾ cover is +2, and 1/2 cover is +1. There is no bonus for ¼ cover. Being prone to get a better aims reduces the likelihood of missing far range shots by 1 in 6, but defending in prone is extremely dangerous, apply a -5 to defend COS. Being prone can reduce the likelihood of missing with far range shots to the point where there is no penalty at all. If you trip and fall, you are in prone. If you fell and wish to leave prone, you must make an acrobatics check to get up safely. Failing this check means you are still prone and you end your turn. Crowded Areas Whenever you are crowded, you cannot use a reach melee weapon or ranged weapon. Doing so incurs a penalty of -5 to weapon-based proficiencies. Likewise, firing into a crowded area where there is mixed company incurs a -5 penalty. Critical Hits/Mishaps Rolling a 1 is an automatic success when rolling for all proficiency checks including weapon-based proficiencies. An automatic failure, rolling a 20, also applies to weapon-based checks as well. An automatic failure or success is just your character getting lucky or unlucky on a check. Treat all proficiency checks, other than weapon-based ones, as normal successes or failures. Whenever you roll an automatic success you have a chance at a critical hit with a weapon-based proficiency or a critical mishap with an automatic failure with a weapon-based proficiency. A critical hit is an automatic success with a weapon proficiency that results in a hit that does twice your maximum damage for that weapon. A critical hit must be confirmed after an automatic success, or said hit is just a normal hit. Roll damage as normal. Confirming a critical hit: to confirm the critical hit, roll under your weapon proficiency rank for that weapon. This rule only applies to weapon proficiencies. This special rule applies only when confirming a critical hit. If a weapon proficiency has 0 ranks, then confirming critical hit is accomplished by rolling one as if they had 1 rank, but damage is only one times your maximum damage for that weapon instead of twice your maximum damage. Critical Mishaps are initiated with automatic misses. Avoiding a critical mishap is done by rolling under your weapon proficiency rank like a critical hit. Rolling over your weapon proficiency confirms it as a critical mishap. Critical mishap with a firearm/crossbow causes it to jam. A jammed weapon requires a repair check to fix it (see proficiencies chapter). Critical mishap with a thrown missile or bow causes your character to hit a target at random, even your party members. Critical mishap with a melee weapon causes your character to lose their balance and fall prone. Damage Resistance and armour damage Damage resistance (DR) is the protective value of your armour. The higher this value, the greater the odds that the damage will be negated by your armour. Whenever, a hit or shot lands, you roll a six-sided die. In order for the damage to be negated, you have to roll under the die range. If it is 2 in 6, for example, then you must roll a 1 or 2 to negate the damage (4, 5, and 6 would not negate in this example). Armour Damage - Whenever your character drops to 0 hit points, armour drops in damage resistance by 1 in 6. Damaged armour is repaired with a armour repair kit, it’s material, and a repair check. If the damage would otherwise drop the armour resistance d below 1 in 6, then that armour is ruined. Ruined armour cannot be repaired, and must be salvaged and rebuilt - it has no chance of negating damage. A repair check can be used to dismantled ruined armour for usable parts, but the armour must be rebuilt by an armour smith. Damaged armour, and weapons at the discretion of the GM can be sold by traders. Destroying Walls, Windows, Doors, And Other Surfaces Destroying glass, stone, or concrete with a weapon, requires that you do enough damage (even unarmed) so that the damage is greater than the hardness. Any damage below hardness is negated. This exceeding damage causes damage to the surface’s hit points. A surface with 0 HP is destroyed. Dual Wielding And Two-Handed Weapons Two light weapons (♱) can be used together on one attack. This is called dual wielding, When attack like this, make one melee weapon check only. Damage is increased by one die (example: 2d4+2 becomes 3d4+2). The draw back is that you lose your strength bonus to damage and as an attribute bonus to melee weapons when dual wielding, Two-handed weapons have the added bonus of adding your strength modifier to their damage total. This is improved to strength and a half for heavy two-handed weapons (✜) (rounded down). Dying, Stabilizing, and Unconsciousness Damage of any kind is subtracted from your available hit points. Dying is the result of dropping to below 0 hit points. Stabilizing is done by a successful death save if you’ve dropped to less than 0 HP. Failing a death save means you can only be revived by a Treat Wounds check. This check must be done one round after you failed your save or you die. If that Treat Wounds check is a failure then you die. If you are stable then you return to 0 HP, and no further death saves are required. You are unconscious. Unconscious characters cannot move, stand, or speak. They lay where they are. You are unconscious when you have 0 HP. Some effects in-game make you unconscious but not affect your available HP. Damage from an unarmed attacker will drop you to 0 HP and unconscious. Damage from an unarmed attacker will not drop your available HP below 0. Explosives and splash damage Explosives do splash damage. All explosives have a 2 meter radius from where they land including gasbombs, molotov cocktails. Anyone within that radius are affected by the acid, explosive, gasbomb, or molotov cocktail. A saving throw can be made versus death, to take half damages for explosives (except gasbombs). Greek fire is a projectile weapon and projects fire unto an unlucky foe. It does not do splash damage. It is more akin to a primitive flame thrower than an explosive. Falling Falling from a height of greater than 3 meters causes 1d4 hit points of damage with 2 additional d4 of hit points of damage every additional 3 meters. Therefore 15 meters would be 5d4 hit points of damage. An acrobatics check is used to take no damage at 3 meters, and half damage afterwords. This damage doesn’t take into count spiked pits. It is assumed that heights in excess of 30 meters would result in immediate death, but you can still try, if your GM feels it would make sense in the campaign. Flanking And Threatened Spaces If you are surrounded by two or more characters your are flanked. If you are flanked, you cannot perform any actions until you attempt to leave the threatened space. Moving out of the threatened space requires an acrobatics check. Your character ends their turn once they move a safe distance away from the threatened space. Moving through any space that is occupied by multiple characters or moving between a person and an obstruction is moving through a threatened space. Attempting to move through a threatened space will cause the end of your turn inside that threatened space and at the beginning of your next turn, you are now flanked. A successful athletics check allows you to maneuver through the area, where at the you end your turn your character is now outside of the threatened zone. If you are flanked you can only defend or try to leave the threatened space. Attempting to attack, causes an immediate end of turn. Attempting to attack while in a threatened space results in a -5 to defend as it is extremely dangerous to do so. Hit Points, Flesh Wounds, and Healing Hit points naturally recover on their own over time. Hit Points recover at a rate equaling your healing rate die per day plus health modifier with 8 hours bed rest. You gain an extra die if you rest both day and night. If your hit points drop below half, your character requires a successful treat wounds performed by another to the initiate recovery process. Otherwise, your hit points recover at one HP per day with 8 hours bed rest, or 2 HP per day with full days best red. The next day after failing a check, you can retry your check (see Gangrene in the Saving Throws chapter). If you succeed at that check your healing rate returns to normal. At character creation you will figure out Hit point total. This amount does not change except with new traits or attribute increases or decreases, Most physical damage in-game causes your character to lose available HP. As long as your available hit points are above the half-way mark, any damage is considered a flesh wound. All hit points are considered the same (flesh wounds and mortal wounds), expect when healing hit points. Flesh wounds don’t require a treat wounds check, as basic bandaging and sterilization is known to most. Wounds that affect bone, muscle, and organs do require treat wounds checks as these are mortal wounds (see healing rate). HP = (HEALTH SCORE + STRENGTH MODIFIER) * 2 NOTE: YOU WILL NEED TO TRACK AT WHICH POINT YOUR HP IS HALF (HT SCORE + ST MODIFIER). Range Range or optimal range is the preferred range without a score for a listed weapon. This is considered iron sighting or firing from the hip. Firing a weapon twice the optimal range means you have a 1 in 6 chance of missing. This increases to a 3 in 6 chance of missing with three times the optimal range. A scopes improves your range with that given weapon, as well as class traits. Without any modifiers, the maximum range of the weapon is four times the number listed, but this results in a 5 in 6 chance of missing. Reaction Rating Before combat, the order of combatants is determined by reaction rating (RR). Reacting rating is not rolled. The combatant with the highest RR goes first, and then so forth. A tie is broken by who has the higher level, then by empathy modifier, and lastly by luck modifier. All PCs, Monsters, and NPCs have a RR. If a tie cannot be broken by this means, then each character should roll to break the tie. REACTION RATING = 5 + CLASS MODIFIER + EMPATHY MODIFIER + LUCK MODIFIER Reloading A Range Weapon in Melee Ranged weapons can be reloaded at the end of the round if there is enough room to do so. Your character needs 10 meters to reload any weapon. If your character does not have this space, they must wait an entire round so they can defend themselves from melee attackers to reload their weapons before they can attack on the next turn. Rounds in Combat and Drawing a Weapon In a fight, time is divided into rounds. A round is 60 seconds. As a general rule, in any given round, a character can move up to 100 meters indoors (walking speed) or 150 meters outside (hurried speed), attack once (some weapons allow hitting multiple targets with one attack - see targeting multiple targets), and then reload or perform a similar action like popping a pill, pushing a button, or giving orders to party members. It is important to note in combat, that characters are constantly moving, dodging and acting in combat. Roleplaying a combat scene involves more roleplaying effort from players than a typical 10 second round, keep that in mind as a GM or player. Drawing a weapon can be done at the end or beginning of a round if the weapon is easily accessible. Drawing a weapon from a backpack, takes an entire round. Two rounds, if you’re using a ranged weapon in melee (less than 10 meters). Sundering a Shield or Weapon Sundering means you have disarmed the opponent of their weapon or shield. Sundering only applies to melee weapons. Attempting to sunder involves first a successful attack, and then if they are unable to defend, then you automatically win the sunder attempt. If however, you both succeed on your checks, then whomever has the highest strength, then total number of melee weapons ranks, and lastly level, wins the sunder attempt. Targeting Multiple Opponents Determining the amount of targets by weapon: the number of targets you can hit in a round is equal to the amount of damage die for any weapon. 1D is one target, 2D is two targets, 3D is 3 targets, 4D is 4 targets, and so forth. The space between each target is simply your character’s movement speed unless the weapon fire rate is single shot. In that case, enemies must be within one meter of each other as the weapon does splash damage like a grenade from a grenade launcher. Unarmed Attacks Animals and monsters have a natural attack proficiency that is unavailable to player characters. Humans learn to fight as part of their melee weapons proficiency. Unarmed damage is 1d2 + your strength modifier. Critical misses and hits still apply to unarmed attacks. There is no separate skill for unarmed attacks.